Horror...... our latest film assignment

Well today I had a very busy day at an abandoned abbey near Talacre. This was the chosen location for our latest film assignment. It doesn't yet have a title but the genre is going to be horror. The story is reality based - Sue, Gemma and I all play ourselves. We've just received our latest assignment and after a discussion at the Uni we're at a loss to come up with any valid ideas. Gemma has a brainwave after seeeing a caravan outside the window she's staring out of. "Let's do a documentary about Caravans!" she says. In the absence of any better ideas we reluctantly agree. So we've decided on the genre and the location is a caravan park near Talacre in North Wales. We arrange an interview with the caravan park owner and make our way over there. After a short interview (the caravan owner is not interested in answering our questions) we decide to go and explore. After following path leading out of the park we end up in a field with a brick wall running next to it. I notice a hole in the wall and suggest to the others that we go and explore. So we all make our way over the wall and into a wooded area. After exploring for a while we come across a graveyard and then what looks like an abandoned abbey. Unfortunately for us strange things start to happen and each member of the group ends up disappearing one by one.... I will post more details of the film once it has been completed and reviewed by our tutors (**See update below**).

We all had a fantastic day filming, it was hard work but very rewarding. The weather in the morning of the shoot was perfect as it was very foggy, this added to the mood greatly. It was good experience experimenting with the lighting, we had to be quite inventive with the torches we carried. We had to produce enough light to film (as parts of the abbey were very dark!) whilst maintaining the mood without making things look too artificial which was quite a challenge. Overall it was a brilliant day, there was some superb acting by Gemma and Sue (and hopefully myself!) and Dawn and Carys were great in helping to film, direct and record the sound. It was a great experience working with the group, we allocated tasks according to peoples strengths and weaknesses but also everyone chipped in when required to do so.
Unfortunately after reviewing the footage it was recognised that some of the scenes were too dark and there were a few continuity errors. We therefore decided that a second days filming was required to correct these issues. Sue, Gemma, Dawn & I therefore headed off to Talacre again but this time we took more torches to help with the light situation. It wasn't a foggy day but most of the re-shoot was inside so it didn't cause us too many problems and we were very pleased with the results. A fantastic job was done by Sue (opening) and Gemma (closing) in post-production with the credits which make the whole production look a lot more professional. Next time I would like to shoot in HD if possible as due to the conversion process (mpeg to Quicktime format) some of the quality was lost. However, I'm very happy with the outcome of the film and I think it's our best production to date.